


i listen and listen but how do i know

by caelestes



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-25
Updated: 2018-02-25
Packaged: 2019-03-23 15:25:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13790577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caelestes/pseuds/caelestes
Summary: She can’t help but wonder if this counts—the essence of her in his ship, the essence of him in her tent pitched along the Resistance’s latest encampment, if it would feel any different, better, if his corporeal self was actually in her arms.





	i listen and listen but how do i know

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To begin again  
if the representation permits it,  
as if to say  
were we faultless  
was the earth  
was the sky an absolute witness  
was the body you inhabited  
only yours—

SUEYEUN JULIETTE LEE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

i.

There are moments. There are moments where the bridge appears. Sound filters to a low murmur and all that’s left in the tempo between her breaths is the beat of his heart. She’ll see him, a static blur and a slightly hunched back. There’s an energy there begging to be let loose, and he’s cracking under its weight.

She says nothing to him. Closes herself off. Burrows deep into the mental constructs she fortifies.

Depending, she’ll get a glance of his surroundings before cutting the connection short. The interior of a cruiser. The cusp of a planet’s edge. Clues which could lead to the Resistance’s victory, if she tried hard enough to piece them together.

She never makes the effort.

 

 

 

 

 

 

ii.

A phantom mask makes the drop on her dreams. A thief of calm sleep. A falsity.

An arc of blue light, a smiling crescent to a typically sober face, splitting _her_ mark, the token, the scar, as the cheeks lift. He laughs. She’s never heard him laugh before.

“Right now,” she tells him, “I’m happy.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

iii.

She eats military rations from uniform packets. Stale and tasteless and dry and she swallows out of habit; a lifetime of eating only what she’s been allowed.

There’s a ringing blast that barrels through the makeshift mess hall. Everyone scrambles. Screams rankle. Debris comes down all around. Dust, tears, and oiled ichor that comes spilling in spouts from the shattered hydraulics.

Rey’s on the floor. Tries to make to stand. Can’t. Her left leg is _shredded_. From the knee to the ankle it’s weeping blood. “Stars,” she curses. The ceiling above groans. She’s going to be crushed under it all. Her elbows support her weight as she attempts to shuffle her mass away.

And then he’s there. Standing among the destruction his own commandants have wrought, entirely caught off mark and off guard. His eyes scurry, then settle on her. His features go white but before he can say or do anything—before he can damn or mock or goad or help or apologize—she spits, “Go, Ben,” and shuts him out with something that feels like righteous grief.

 

 

 

 

 

 

iv.

With the ballast of failure lining her form, her shields drop. Consciousness coming and going in abrupt waves, she opens her eyes to angular black and grey. It’s broad strokes that fill her vision: his hair and downcast lids and arms bent in front of his chest. It’s dreamlike, hazy. And, feeling so divorced from reality, Rey doesn’t feel any shame in holding on.

He comes to eventually, on his side as she is, inches between, and the look on his face goes from one of disbelief to weighing whether he should shut her out as she has done these past months, kick her out of his bed and out of his mind. Rey sees all of this plainly. They can’t hide from each other, not like this.

“ _Rey_.” Her name is both acidic and soft in the dark, and Ben sounds sick with pronouncing it.

Her chest caves, heart inside scooped out, replaced with a yearning to just be _held_. “I’m cold,” she states, simply.

He settles closer. It’s imperfect, equal parts hesitant and clumsy and awkward when he places a hand on her waist. Their noses brush. He moves the blankets up, above their shoulders. “I’ve never—”

She knows what he’s about to say. She knows, because it’s her truth as well. _I’ve never held another person to me like this_. “Me either.”

They study each other in silence. The chronometer on the adjacent wall shows the time creeping into early morning as Rey drifts off.

 

 

 

 

 

 

v.

She sees him in the flesh one-hundred and twenty-eight days after the Supremacy. She’s kept the tally marked in her head, not having durasteel to etch each line—and she couldn’t even if she wanted to. He’s the point on which everyone in the Resistance directs their hatred.

_We have an audience_. His voice makes its home in her head.

She ignites her blade at the precise moment he does his.

 

 

 

 

 

 

vi.

The wind wails like an unruly child. Rain comes down in glistening sheets as a complement, drenching her shift and her skin and her bones. They’re fractured, two of them. Ribs cradling her lungs, every time she inhales a rasped torture. A hunting expedition for wild game gone to hell. But she has her gifted tracker crouched in her palm, rhythmically squeezing it in an attempt to reassure herself someone, anyone, is coming. ( _You know they can’t spare a search party_ , a vicious insecurity whispers, _they’re not coming_. _And if they do_ , _it will take days_.)

And she’s begging, grits out, “Don’t ask me, please,” because Ben wants to know where she is and he’s making promises she doesn’t believe he’ll ever be able to legitimately keep.

“I’ll come _myself_ ,” he says, and she wonders if he truly thinks that—up to the point where he’d show up with a battalion to locate her starving comrades hidden in this desolate outback; not far from where she’s stranded.

“I can’t tell you.”

“It’s easy.” He’s trying to convince her. “Give me coordinates. A name.”

She shakes her head.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

vii.

It’s entirely silent, aside for the low hum of the dreadnought’s generators. It strips things down, a bit too bare, a bit too revealing, and Rey feels horribly self-aware. She’s never attempted an act like this before. Never felt the need to, really. Considered it an extraneous exercise, a foolish compunction for companionship; not accomplishing much, except for a brief moment of personal respite when one could be gathering their dinner or finding shelter before R’iia’s breath sent Jakku’s sands into a swirling dervish.

Her throat feels too tight, and her knees nearly lock. She only finds bravery in the fact that she knows Ben’s never done this either. “Don’t move,” she says—although there’s not much risk of it. He’s stock still in front of her. To anyone else looking on he’d seem impassive, immovable. Such a difference: what’s presented outwardly and what Rey sees inside his head.

She presses her mouth to his, feather-light. Testing. When she pulls back, only a second later, the feeling coursing through her resembles drinking five cups of caf in quick succession. Jittery, about to jump out of her skin. “Ben?”

He’s shaking. Steps—no, trips—forward, further into her space. “Sorry,” he mutters, “I’m sorry.” And Rey wants to ask what he could possibly be apologizing for, before she catches onto the thoughts skirting at his consciousness. Embarrassment; unlearned, too old for her, _I don’t know what I’m doing_.

Cutting beliefs, sharp and hurtful, because she doesn’t care, he should _know_ she doesn’t care, that’s not her, not even close, but he’s as swaddled in his own insecurities as she is. “Can you…” She trails off, voice faint, takes his wrist instead and brings it to her lips, presses a kiss to the inside of it—then directs his hand to her breastbone, heart fluttering, chest rising and falling with quick little breaths when Ben splays his fingers across her skin. “Touch me,” she says, surprising herself with how steady the words come out. “I want you to touch me.”

And Ben just… _leans_ into her, suddenly animated, takes a fistful of her hair and presses his thumb to where her collarbone dips. He kisses her, tongue darting out to lick at the seam of her lips. She opens her mouth for him with a soft whine, star-strewn eyes hidden behind closed lids, molten, sparkling silver, with an exhilaration at the center of her stomach, and he pushes forward. It’s sloppy, artless, inexpert, but Rey’s never felt so wanted.

(She can’t help but wonder if this counts—the essence of her in his ship, the essence of him in her tent pitched along the Resistance’s latest encampment, if it would feel any different, _better_ , if his corporeal self was actually in her arms.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

viii.

There’s mud caked on her boots and he eyes them, says, tersely, “These floors were polished less than an hour ago.” It’s humor dry enough it could light flint, and it’s so unique to him that Rey can’t help the swell in her chest. (There’s also the matter of how much he resembles his father in this—and in so many other things—but she can’t dwell on that without wanting to cry.)

Her feet scuffle back and forth, the refuse going _everywhere_ (and nowhere since she’s not really there, he’s not with her, she’s not with him, what are they _doing_ ) and Ben puts on a markedly put-off expression while she quirks an eyebrow. A swath of giggles threaten to spill from her mouth. She can see a tilt to Ben’s lips but he doesn’t give in.

“Really,” he drawls, playing the affronted party perfectly, “no respect for other’s property.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

ix.

An inferno serves as the nexus for the firefight raging two star systems away. Celestial gold, stark, lighting the path among a massive orgy of tangled bodies—crystalized and ashen, suspended, floating in space; amidst the battle still going.

Rey can feel the adrenaline coursing through her blood. Perspiration dots her brow, her hairline matted to her forehead. Hands clammy as sea urchins, phantom stretch with the leather encasing them, circling the toggle. Only they’re not _her_ hands, they’re Ben’s— as he falls back in a lightening fast maneuver and blows a Resistance warbird to hell.

Meditation had been a temptation earlier, a chance to extricate herself from the ceaseless violence while she sat polishing junk parts for repairs in a sequestered bunker. But she’d stayed nestled in his mind because, well, she was _concerned_ , even if she had to reluctantly make peace with the fact that every time Ben managed to kill those who meant to kill him, even if they were her allies, she was relieved.

It’s when a blast hits the hull of his TIE, sends it nearly careening into a neighboring cruiser’s hangar, that she lets out a shout. But he rights it, damnation a hair’s breadth away, checks the system analysis— _MODERATE_ , it reads, assessing the damage—and admonishes, not cavalier so much as affirming, _Don’t worry so much_.

Though it’s at odds with the crisp amazement that curls in his heart at being worried over, likened to the bewilderment that always seems to emanate from him when Rey comes to his defense in a spat with ferocious protectiveness. Yet, underneath it, there’s a latent undercurrent… he could _feel_ the uncompromising pull, the vicious cold, the black and endless night and blissful silence, and it would have just been done, it would have been well and truly over… Rey recoils. _Stop it_. _You know it hurts me?_ _It hurts_ me _when you think those thoughts_.

Ben flinches—he hasn’t known she’s seen through this looking glass before—and cuts their connection to the quick. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

x.

 

 

 

[a.]

 

 

 

They meet on the planet Iaomai—utilitarian, clean-lined, and sterile; a remarkable berth for medical advancement. The economy has sprouted multiple legs, the war serving as an unending source of income, the top-tier medcenters housing more patients than can be reasonably accommodated.

Those being treated are solely First Order militia and citizens living under those flag posts, and Rey can’t help but feel a stab of jealousy at the resources supplied to them. Can’t help but wonder how many wounded Resistance fighters would live if they had access to the same facilities and personnel secreted in Iaomai’s confines. (But it’s a sobering sight; walking through the streets, seeing those soldiers—the men and women in those black and red uniforms—led on transports to where they’ll be treated. Some quietly struggle, others wail for family members. It’s a reminder: _We’re not so different_. _We’re all creatures who want and love and die_.)

It’s an unassuming inn located in the lower rent district where Ben lowers himself between her thighs. Rey’s still not acquainted enough with this, this onslaught of sensation when his tongue licks a slow stripe up her center as she hesitantly runs her fingers through his hair. It’s a delay borne from fear—she never thought she would have this until she was nineteen and reaching for his bared hand lightyears beyond; and she’s still waiting for it to be snatched from her, for the tether that connects them to snap, to suddenly be left alone and floundering and with nothing but phantom touches to keep her company. He doesn’t belong to her. He never has. She tries to remind herself of this often to mitigate the inevitable damage.

He dips a finger inside, shallow, then another, to stretch and ease, and her spine forms a curvature; like Geonosis’ rocky, red-tinged rings. He’s at turns demanding and relaxed in his ministrations, shifting as a prism from one moment to the next. Rey empathizes—they’re hardly ever together in the flesh like this, intermittent meetings she can count on barely one hand, scattered over the last four years. It’s brings forth a needy urge to take but also to savor, and the two are incompatible.

He waits until she’s come under his tongue twice, till she’s hypersensitive and desperate, before he makes his way back up her body to her mouth. She’s met with musk and sweet, her eyes closing tight and his hand between them, guiding himself inside her. “Maker, Ben—” An aborted wail from a hoarse, inelegant voice—she doesn’t like to talk much during this, not when they can commune their thoughts to each other easily enough. It feels more private that way. It’s harder when the actual words greet the waking world.

A punctuated thrust forward, a hand on her breast. “ _Eight months_ ,” he stresses, buries his face into the column of her throat, mutters the rest against tacky, heated skin—“It’s been the shortest time since… but it also feels…”

_Like an age_ , Rey’s mind supplies. He groans in assent, hitches her leg up, managing to take himself even deeper, hitting a spot inside her that makes her see stars. Fever-bright, shivering, the short blonde hairs of her arms standing on end, she’s clinging to him as a reservoir to its host, thinks, _Do I encompass as much of you as you do me?_ (Again, words she’d never say out loud; but it’s not difficult to allow them to flit into the chasm only they can share.)

“Yes,” he hisses into her ear as he draws closer, a sharp whisper curdled in the Dark—dzwol shâsotkun—meeting her Light. “I _swear_ —” A choked declaration in time with the slap of skin on skin, and Rey feels guilt tangle its way round her limbs, icy and awful and taking the edge off her pleasure. Even as flung out as she is, she’s sure to hide it from him: the way it makes her feel when he’s always so quick to verbalize what she’s hesitant or utterly unable to.

“Rey?” He’s slowed, and she sees him looking down at her with confusion and concern.

There’s moisture leaking past her lids, running thin trails down her cheeks. She tries her best to form a reassuring smile, says, “Don’t—don’t stop. Please.” Spurs him on with fingertips digging indents at his hips, moves her best under his weight to match him when he obeys without further inquiry; simply kissing her face, gathering up her tears with his lips and with his tongue.

It’s when his rough, calloused thumb comes to press on her clit, circling in a ceaseless rhythm, that she tips into orgasm again, him thrusting into her wildly through the aftershocks, not stopping until he’s spilled inside her, lending to the wet mess between their bodies.

 

 

 

[b.]

 

 

 

After, as they drift between sleep and wakefulness, his cheek resting on her chest and her carding his matted curls back from his forehead, she’ll blame how she’s been scraped to the bone, how their time apart has coalesced, tallies against their brief trysts, how she’s so raw and yearning to the point where she pleads, quiet, nearly indiscernible, “Olaror yaim.”

At that, he seizes in her arms; like death, like dying. Leaves the bed, leaves her, without even a glance. Rey, bereft, pulls the sheets to her, over her naked body. Without him she feels unbearably cold. She sits.

Back as a front, he dresses, answers, “I offered you a home.” 

“You offered titles and a pair of twin thrones, Ben. That’s not a home.” 

“We could have made it one,” he counters. “But _you_ said no. You were the one who left and abandoned me for—”

“ _I wanted you with me_ ,” Rey bites out, voice pungent and thick with all she’s holding back. They’ve managed to never exchange words on this before. And now the conversation is here, the brimming hypotheticals and dashed hopes and shattered dreams, like pressure from a blown airlock, let loose and savage. “I told you. I _promised_ and you didn’t believe me—”

Turning to her, face flush, she’s reminded of how _young_ Ben looks when he’s angry, desperate to win an argument. He goads, patronizing, as if she’s a naïve fool he has to educate—“It’s not a matter of ‘belief.’ What were you planning to do, Rey? Step between me and a firing squad? Your Resistance dogs would have had me cuffed and against a wall the minute we made planetfall.”

“It wouldn’t have been like that—”

“No?”

“No, Ben! And even _if_ it had come to that, your mother would have—”

“My _mother_ ,” Ben leers, enunciating the term like a slur, “does not possess as much sway as you or her devout constituents may think. Her betters would have snipped any strings she tried to manipulate, and she—in this… _situation_ that you’re postulating—would have been turned into a pathetic mockery among the peers she’s always sought to impress.”

His resentment is such a palpable thing that Rey thinks one could actually mold it into shape. Adolescent years carrying acrid bitterness, and she unable to prod at the meat of it. Leia _loves_ her son, Rey knows. But there’s a divide there between parent and child. Nascent knowledge of Ben’s relationship with Luke aside—and a near-opaque glimmer as to his dynamic with Han—this is a familial tie he’s kept carefully bared from her.

“And you…” The vicious edge to his tone cuts in half. Already folding in on himself, retreating. Continuing, detached, almost worse than any rise she ever gets out of him, this dissociated coldness. “And you, my darling—they would have cut you to pieces until there was nothing left.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

xi.

He angles into her, an arbor in a storm. His massive weight crushing, having her in a saber lock with his breadth brushing hers and his face inches from her own. Exertion has him on a knife’s edge with paleness slick and eyes wild. She’s no better—bones bearing with a pleasant ache, hair a knotted mess down her back. “Your form has improved,” he croons, softly. It’s scanting dangerously close to affectionate.

The skirmish surrounding them—ground troops meeting, gunshots, ear-splitting hollers—begs for the exchange to be antagonistic. But it isn’t. Far from it, and it makes nausea ferment in Rey’s stomach as it does. _Traitor_ , _traitor_ , derides her conscience. She ignores it with long-held practice. “No longer mindlessly gnashing and hacking away like a Nexu anymore,” she agrees with coltish sentiment. “All the worse for you.” Twisting her ankle, she splits the hold, an elbow to Ben’s side, his blade nearly kissing her for it.

“Quite,” Ben breathes; and it’s not pain coloring his tone but something else.

 

 

 

 

 

 

xii.

Low blue dusk emanates from the room’s glow-panels. The muted light sets Ben’s profile into relief, turns his severe edges into more pronounced lines. Her lips press to many, scattering his upper half; his sternum, his shoulder, the shell of his ear. He _hates_ his ears. It’s why he wears those dark coils in the style he does. She tucks those strands behind, though, whispers, “There isn’t time.” _I have to go_.

He nods, accepting. They’ve been here before. _If I die tomorrow_ … “Never enough,” he mutters, tracing her brow, the bridge of her nose.

Rey doesn’t know what’s coming. And, even if she had learned to manipulate the Force to grant her better foresight, all is variable. “It will be alright.” _I’ll follow you_. Before or after or together, she _does_ know they’ll greet each other beyond the veil.

It’s the only surety she clings to.

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to drop by and say hi, you can find me on [Tumblr](https://hapans.tumblr.com/).
> 
> And much thanks to Dee for looking over the various drafts of this. ♥


End file.
